"cactus" <baldemar.malnariz@ubadlands.edu> wrote in message
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Chris Devol wrote:

"cactus" <baldemar.malnariz@ubadlands.edu> wrote in message
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<snip>

I meditate also, usually with a mantra, but a different one than you
use. The sounds used in mantras have meanings, and must be chosen
carefully. Ignorance is not bliss.

If you say you meditate with a mantra, I respectfully inquire why it is
that you speak disparagingly of the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra, which is
the greatest of all mantras, since it is directly the names of the
greatest of all personalities, the Supreme Lord?

And if you understand mantra meditation, then you ought to know that the
principle of operation of a mantra is the fact that, in the spiritual
world, a word is not different from the thing it signifies. So how could
you speak disparagingly of the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra, which puts the
sincere chanter directly in the personal presence of the Supreme Lord,
the Personality of Godhead?

Exactly what is it that you are meditating on?

Currently I use the last line of Psalm 150 (in Hebrew). I have used
permutations of the 3 "mother letters," which can help develop certain
emotional states. Other times I have used pairwise permutations of the
letters with vowels of the Jewish alphabet, but that is a challenge to
keep up. Commentaries on the "Sefer Yetzirah" teach us that the sound of
each letter can enhance specific emotional states. E.g., "mmmmm" can
impart serenity.

"Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. You must praise the
Lord". That is very good, the highest truth.

Thank you. I think we are doing the same thing in different ways.

The direct meaning is that every

living being is commanded to praise the Lord, i.e. to serve the Lord. The
Lord is a Person. He has arms, legs, eyes, ears, a face, and He has a
name, address, telephone number, etc.

My tradition teaches me otherwise, or at leas that all that is irrelevant.
The Kaddish, probably the oldest prayer in Judaism, does not even mention
G-d, only alludes to the one who is "beyond all praise and psalm." Any
description of G-d is incomprehensible to Jews.

That approach is called impersonalism. It regards all descriptions of God
the Person as metaphors, and takes the impersonal, formless "light" or
"force" or "universal consciousness" as the all in all. I'm sorry to say
that it is an inferior theology, because although God certainly has
impersonal aspects, He is the original Person without a doubt, and the proof
is that persons exist, and this could not be unless their source were also a
Person. Moreover, it is common sense that persons can be the source of
impersonal things, but impersonal things cannot engender persons.

I have read Sepher Yetzirah, and I found it

quite interesting. It is written in such a way that it can appear to be
either a description of a yoga system for acquiring power for oneself, or
as a devotional system for becoming a servant of God the Person. It is
very much a gauge that can reveal one's level of spiritual advancement.

That's exactly what Aryeh Kaplan's translation and commentary says.

I'm familiar with him.

"mmmmmm", is actually "om", the impersonal sound representation of
Krishna. "om" is frequently chanted by yogis desiring to merge with the
impersonal Brahman light emanating from the body of the Lord. "om" is
actually not different from Krishna, as the energy emanating from Him is
not different from Himself, but the attitude of the chanter will
determine whether or not he can realize the Personality of Godhead, or
the impersonal Brahman.

Right.

I have observed that the cores of the mystical and meditative faiths are
very similar with regard to their objective of unity with the Godhead. I
include Judaism, Buddhism, Sufism, Taoism and Brahmanism (I think that
describes you, correct me if I'm wrong).

I would not characterize Krishna Consciousness as Brahmanism. I am a
Vaishnava, a worshiper of Vishnu, or Krishna, the Supreme Personlity of
Godhead. The proper term is Sanatana Dharma, the eternal duty of the living
entity, which is to serve the Lord.

Brahmanism has come to mean the impersonalism I mentioned. That is what has
unfortunately made its way into the comparative religion and history texts
as "hinduism", thanks to the propagandizing of Vivekananda, Ramakrishna,.and
others. They do not, however, actually represent the majority of Indians.
The predominating religion of India has always been Vaishnavism, the worship
of the Personal Supreme Lord.

I have indeed not been vaccinated with your particular theology any
more than I have with Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism,
Brahmanism, Sikhism, Jainism, or any religion other than Judaism.

Did your "Judaism" teach you to speak disparagingly of the Hare Krishna
Maha Mantra?

No, it doesn't; in fact the opposite. However, I do respond to the type
of arrogance that I see here. An exchange of views is wonderful, and why
I'm here, but religious arrogance is ultimately dangerous to everyone.

If you think I am arrogant, I assure you that I have nothing on King
David, the author of the Psalms. He claims to be wiser than all his
teachers, and he rails constantly, in very cruel language, against the
people who are against the supremacy of the Lord. He wants to kill them
all without mercy. You want that to be the meaning of "arrogance"?

King David was certainly no prize. For interesting scholarly support of
your view, I recommend Baruch Halpern's book "David's Secret Demons."
Makes your comments look like praise of him.

David was one of a cast of many. Lot had children by his daughters, who
founded Moab. Ruth was a Moabitess. She seduced Boaz in the threshing
house - a somewhat more graphic explanation appears in "The Harlot by the
Side of the Road" by Jonathan Kirsch. King Saul had a form of psychosis
that made him believe he was a wolf. Read about the people in Judges -
Samson was not a nice person, Yiftach has been nominated for a Darwin
award, and so on. The point that everyone makes is that the patriarchs
and important people in our tradition were ordinary people with very human
failings. Look where we came from - except for that damfool covenant,
we're nothing special.

We take the teachings for what they are. David was not a nice person, but
he wrote great lyrics.

Actually, David is one of my heros to be sure. I agree 100% with his
attitude. I am also quite sure that when he wrote his lyrics, he was most
definitely not thinking of an impersonal, formless "force" out there in the
universe. He was well aware that God is a Person, and the direct meaning of
the Psalms is the meaning he intended, not the metaphorical interpretation.

As far as I am concerned, arrogance is for those who will not take
instruction from God, what to speak of praising Him and serving Him, but
who are trying to become God themselves. That's real arrogance.

Like IMO Jesus of Nazareth.

Excuse me, but if you're going to criticize the greatest devotee of the
Lord, then I'm going to say that all your so-called meditation, along with
your so-called "Judaism" is going to take you nowhere but to hell. The Lord
forgives offenses against Himself, but not offenses against His devotees.

I of course admit to having all the frailties that other human beings
have, and petty arrogance is one of them. But I don't think that is what
you meant.

Let's leave it behind.

I did not disparage your mantra, nor did I disparage your religion - if
it came out that way I apologize. I did intend to comment on your
attitude that your way is a "vaccination against ignorance," which
appears to me to share the intolerance of certain of the evangelicals on
this forum.

If I was one of "them", I would say that "your religion" wrote the book
on how to be intolerant.

Jews have learned tolerance over the last millennia, except for our
fundamentalists, who never seem to learn.

But I am not one of "them". Nor am I one of "us".

There is no "my" religion. There is no "my" mantra. It is God's religion,
and God's mantra, and anyone who chants it sincerely, wanting to serve
God, will quickly be elevated to the topmost position of love of Godhead.

What about those who use other mantras?

The Hare Krishna Mantra is recommended for the present age of kali. But if
one is sincerely chanting God's name in any language he will attain God. If
one is not chanting God's name, he will not attain God.

But ignorance is not a mental illness. If it were, children would be
considered mentally ill. I've seen plenty of real mental illness and
knowledge, intelligence and ignorance are all independent of it.

Ignorance is a mental illness, because our original state is to be full
of knowledge. Ignorance is a loss of memory of that original fulness of
knowledge, caused by our migration to the material world and consequent
assumption of the gross and subtle bodies, including the material mind.

I think that this is a theological difference between our respective
faiths. Very interesting.

I was looking at mental illness clinically because of my experience,
whereas you regard it as a spiritual affliction. I could see that, even
though I do not regard ignorance even as a spiritual illness. I spent
many years being ignorant of my religion. I certainly missed out during
that time, but I ultimately began a learning process that has improved my
life and deepened my spirituality. So I guess I regard ignorance as a
form of spiritual weakness rather than disease.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna defines "mind" as one of His separated
material energies. In other words, what we call the mind is actually a
subtle form of matter. The mind as such only exists in the material
world. And the material mind, like all other material products, is
defective. The "ignorance" that is a mental illness stems from this
material mind. When one identifies the material mind with the self, which
is pure spirit, insanity is the result.

This is very difficult for me to understand - I have too much of a
clinical view. I certainly agree that our minds are limited.

In the spiritual world, there are no defects. Things in the material world
are facsimiles of things in the spiritual world. They are, in effect, crude
props, imitations of spiritual things, made in a rough and ready fashion for
temporary use by the deluded souls who have migrated to this world. The
subtle material mind is the interface through which the soul contacts the
gross material body. You should check out Bhagavad-Gita for a more thorough
discussion.

Ignorance is very much a mental illness. Doesn't your "Judaism" teach
that?

No, it does not. It prizes learning, which is the movement from
ignorance to knowledge. We are taught that one of our greatest sages,
Rabbi Akiva, was illiterate until the age of 40, at which point he began
his studies. This reminds us that it is never too late to begin learning.
But we do not regard ignorance as illness.

In the material paradigm, people compare themselves to one another, and
the concepts of disease and health have become graded relativities. In
the spiritual paradigm, everyone is compared to God, and those concepts
become starkly contrasted. Compared to God's mind, our minds are very
much defective. They are "not at ease", i.e., they are diseased.

To me, this is like calling the Wright Brothers' plane defective in
comparison to, say, the Concorde. It just reflects an earlier, more
primitive understanding. But it worked - it flew as far as it could.

Our minds work as far as they can, but we never know enough to prevent all
the sufferings of birth, death, disease, and old age, because our minds
themselves are infected with those flaws. One of the "side effects" of the
Hare Krishna Mantra is to cleanse the mind of those impurities.